Australian AgTech A Commentary on the Report of the Agri-Tech Expert Working Group June 2021
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Keywords
Agriculture, AgTech, Connectivity, policy, Australia
Abstract
The government AgriTech Expert Working Group has provided a detailed overview of the practical challenges domestic Australian farmers have to deal with when digitising their farms through the implementation of connected sensor technologies, motivated by the predicted growth of the sector to AUD 100 billion by 2030. In addressing these issues, of which connectivity and access to wireless technologies along with unreliable sensor performances over time remain prominent, domestic regional specific solutions are sought. A key solution being relied upon are low earth orbital satellites, perhaps the only communication infrastructure that cycles over territorial boundaries and has both regulatory and technical challenges that are not widely considered. The resilience of these solutions is assessed in the context of the agricultural technology, or AgTech, market which is arguably invented and shaped by broader, global interests mostly centred where end-user populations are based. The argument is made that government policy must include the latter within a larger holistic framework, including education, when assessing the future of both agriculture and AgTech markets in Australia. At the core, the AgTech report does highlight some challenges in Australia’s wider research approach.
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John Canning, University of Technology Sydney
John Canning is an award-winning optical engineer specialising in self-assembled photonics, waveguide and integrated photonics, photonic devices, and sensing and lasers, who has served the tertiary, government and business sectors in a number of capacities. He has co-founded technology startups, mentored and advised young staff and students in several startups and in their career, and has been a consultant in sensitive technology cases. John is Professor in the School of Electrical and Data Engineering at UTS and runs the interdisciplinary Photonics Laboratories (iPL), which is behind some of the most notable achievements in photonics, including the development of the world’s first optical fibres drawn from 3D-printed preforms and smartphone photonic devices. An Adjunct Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at UNSW, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney, John has played an active role in supporting and encouraging inter-institutional cross-disciplinary projects to explore new applications in photonics and nanotechnology. John has over 800 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and is a prolific inventor having lodged more than 35 patents. His research interests include also optics and technologies in telecommunications, lasers, sensing and diagnostics, 3D printing, supramolecular photonics, and molecular self-assembly. He is a Fellow of SPIE and OSA, and has been an Expert Member of the University of Sydney's Latin Regional Advisory Committee and an Advisor to the China and India activities of that university. He has previously held the majority of ARC fellowships as well as the Villum Kann Rasmussen (Aarhus University) and Otto Monsted professorships (Danish Technical University) in Denmark and Science Without Borders Professorship (UTFPR) in Brazil. His awards include the OSA David Richardson Medal (2017) for seminal fundamental science contributions and translation of that work to industry; the student-led Hitachi Social Innovation Award (2016) and Edmund Optics Educational Bronze Award for the development of smartphone spectrometers (2015); and the inaugural Outstanding Reviewer Award- Optical Society of America (2012), among others.
